


The Clock

by MuggleMaybe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Community: HPFT, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:57:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7000489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuggleMaybe/pseuds/MuggleMaybe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>banner by beyond the rain at TDA</em>
  <br/>
  <img/>
</p>
<p>Fred is lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Clock

**Author's Note:**

> You can blame JKR for any unhappy feels this causes. Also, this might not make any sense if you don't read to the end. Just a warning.

Mum owls my flat. “George, I miss you. You should stop by.”

She doesn’t understand.

I can’t face it.

Not with you staring, always staring, sucking any surviving air from my lungs. The sight of you contracts my heart. Blood pumps a trio of words through my limbs, stubborn as Hell. _I miss him, I miss him, I miss him._ My never-ending refrain. No expression in the world could mock more bitterly than yours. The gestures of your hands puncture every last balloon that ever sought sanctuary in my chest, until I am empty. Used up. Deflated.

Your arms are spread wide when I am near, a coincidence of placement through which fate has found yet one more method to torture my damned soul.

I have considered shaking you senseless, forcibly changing the hands of fate so at least I can be with him again. Whole. I don’t care what the outcome might be. My life would be no sacrifice, so long as it would end the pain.

I hope death is kinder, much kinder, than this. I pray he does not suffer as I do.

Sometimes at night, I wake to echoes. The past holds an insufferable quantity of pain. And fear. And, worst of all, of laughter.

No ghost could haunt me more thoroughly.

But you wouldn’t understand that. You are cold, wooden. You care nothing for tears, or scars, or punch lines that escape my grasp, draining away into yet more tears. Even the passage of time means nothing to you, though you’d think it would.

And yet, if you are merely an empty shell, how do you invade my thoughts and infect my dreams? How do you tarnish what was once sacred ground?

There will never again be such a place as home. Not for me. Not until you clasp your hands together at last. I do not want to see my mother, but it is respect for her, more than anything else, that prevents me from rushing to that end of my own accord.

I am not entirely without hope. Ginny gives me comfort, her small hands frank and gentle like no one else’s. And Percy, Merlin help me. Only now do I appreciate his severity, his solemnity. Ron never knows what to say, but his loss for words is something I can understand perfectly. His bafflement holds more clarity for me than any string of syllables ever could.

Still, I am alone, condemned to solitude. And you—you cruel observer of facts, you soulless fiend, you gnawing monster, you devil incarnate—you dismiss, without remorse, the kindness of a lie. You hang coolly in your place, as if the sun still rises, concealing at your back the corroded nail, blood red with rust, that tells a deeper truth. I know now for certain that I am a coward, but pride cannot sway me to look upon your face. Nothing could persuade me.

Your slender hand carries his name.

_Fred._

You declare his fate.

_Lost._

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the phrase "devil incarnate" of Shakespeare fame.


End file.
